


Goodnight Little Blossom

by Peanutbutterly



Category: The Royal Romance (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 22:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peanutbutterly/pseuds/Peanutbutterly





	Goodnight Little Blossom

It is 2 AM closer to 3 maybe. Riley has been rummaging through her bags looking for the lady liberty keychain she’d bought Liam the week before. She had meant to go to bed early, with the coronation the next day she figured more rest would do her some good. The coronation had consumed more of her thoughts the closer it got, and now the night before it was all she could think about. What would happen if she didn’t become queen? Would all the work they’d done mean nothing? What if she did become queen? What would that mean? She came into this hoping Liam would pick her but now that it was finally happening why was there a growing pit in her stomach?

“Ouch!” The closet door she’d been propping open had somehow managed to slide free, slamming itself against her foot.

“For fuck’s sake” she kicks it in frustration, and in response, the throbbing in her foot intensifies.

“Riley?” Maxwell’s muffled voice comes from the other side of the heavy bedroom door.

“I’m fine Maxwell.” She says, staring dejectedly at the ugly purple bruise that’s beginning to form on her left ankle. “I probably shouldn’t wear the dress with the slit tomorrow, nobody wants to see that”. She thinks to herself.

“Riley?” Maxwell is still there.

“Riley? It sounds like you’re fighting something in there. Are you fighting something? If you are you should know that dancing is a lot like fighting. I mean I’m not very good at throwing punches but I’m very good at dodging them. There was this one time…”

Riley yanks the door open. “I’m fine Max. Really.”

Maxwell who had still been rambling as the door opened, grows silent as he registers the state she is in. She is hunched over to the right, her injured left ankle resting limply on the plush carpet. Her hair is disheveled and sweat has matted the hair at the front of her face against her forehead. She is rubbing her eyes, managing somehow to make the aggressive redness rimming them even worse.

Riley watches the concern settle over Maxwell’s face. “Wow she really must look as bad as she feels,” she thinks.

“You don’t look fine.” His brow creased. His hair flops over his face the way it does whenever he has just woken up. Usually, Riley thinks there is a boyishness about that that is strangely endearing, today it seems to darken his features, intensifying the look of worry on his face.

“What happened to your foot?” He asks.

“The closet door attacked me.”

He smiles sympathetically and extends his hand to help her back into the room.

Riley settles gingerly at the edge of the bed. Maxwell keeps standing, taken aback a little by the messiness of the room. Her cheeks heat up in embarrassment as his eyes take in the gowns strewn across the floor, the upturned armchair in the corner and the open suitcases propped against the wall. In the dim light, the room looks smaller, more crowded, it looks more cluttered than a room of that size should be.

“Wow. Riley. This is… he trails off running his hands through his hair.

“I couldn’t find the keychain I got for Liam, I know it’s not a big deal, he probably won’t even mind that I didn’t get him something. But tomorrow is important I don’t want to screw it up, I need to find it. It’s only a keychain but maybe it makes a difference.” She’s rambling and she realises mid-sentence that she has been holding her breath. Tears begin to sting at the back of her eyelids. There is a slight tremor in her hands now. Maxwell tries to remedy this by holding them but she’s still shaking and her breath comes in shorter and shorter.

“Hey, it’s okay. Breathe, I’m right here. Just Breathe. Okay?”

They sit at the edge of the bed for a long time as Riley slowly takes deeper breaths and Maxwell holds her, murmuring into her hair, rubbing her back.

“You know when I was younger and I couldn’t sleep my mum would carry me up and down the main hall until I fell asleep. Maxwell begins suddenly. My father hated it. “That’s the sort of thing that makes a boy soft”, he’d always say. The day she died, I paced up and down the hall all night, hoping I’d fall asleep, wake up the next morning and find that she wasn’t really gone. That it was all a bad dream.” Riley reaches up to touch his face, his eyes normally a piercing cheerful blue have taken on a heaviness she’s never seen before. He smiles at her in a way that says “It’s okay, it was a long time ago anyway”, but Riley has a hard time believing that it is truly okay.

He has never talked about his mother with her and the suddenness of it coupled with how complicated her own family is, make it difficult for her to find an appropriate response.

“I know the time you had together was short. But you’re lucky you had a mother like that, even for a short while. I never really knew mine.”

She immediately regrets that statement. It sounds like she is playing a game of “who has it worse”.What she had meant to say was that his relationship with his mom sounded beautiful, she wanted to say that all she’d ever wanted was something like that. Instead, it came out bitter, like she was trying to say Maxwell was not grateful enough for what he did have. At that moment she expected Maxwell to pull away, to flinch at least but instead he looks at her with a disarming earnestness and says “I’m sorry about your mum Riley.”

There are tears pushing against her eyelids again. She loves how immune he is to things, how he is seemingly unaffected by other people’s bitterness and resentment. She especially loves how he is immune to her bitterness, her resentment. It makes her feel like he understands that her bitterness is really sadness, her resentment an expression of her disappointment at never knowing what having a family should feel like. For what must be the umpteenth time since coming to Cordonia she has the distinct feeling that only Maxwell can see her in the way she needs to be seen.

She notices for the first time that he smells faintly of alcohol. He only drinks at parties. “If he’s been drinking tonight that means he’s nervous about tomorrow too.” She thinks.

“Max, everything will change tomorrow.”

He hums in agreement his thumb tracing circles across her forearm. “But it will be a good change, you and Liam…he trails off. He’s slightly drowsy, he’s having a hard time finding the right words. “You’ll be happy”, he says finally smiling at her.

“It will be weird not having you wake me up every morning” Riley begins. If I become queen could I hire you as my personal human alarm clock? I’ll even pay you in cronuts.” She giggles, he laughs along with her. They laugh harder and longer than is necessary because the lack of sleep has started to make them delirious. When their laughter dies down, Maxwell says, “Honestly though, you don’t have to pay me. I would do it for free.”

There’s that earnestness again. He is looking at her with an expression that is so open and so honest that she knows he means what he said, but also that his words might mean more than that. The moment feels more intimate like he has just confessed something to her. Maxwell looks away, training his eyes on the floor.

“Is he embarrassed?” she wonders. “Say something Riley, I should say something”, she urges but sleepiness has begun to slow her mind down. The moment has passed and Riley clenches her jaw, a little frustrated with herself. They are silent for a long moment.

“I’ll come visit” she mutters as her eyes begin to droop.

“You should. We’ll miss you. Bertrand won’t know what to do with himself when you’re gone.”

We. Riley is slightly annoyed at the use of the word we, at the mention of Bertrand. Why hadn’t he said, “I’ll miss you”? She is, however, too overcome by sleep to continue thinking about it. Maxwell releases her, and slowly wraps a blanket around her.

“Goodnight little blossom”.

Riley is too sleepy to manage a coherent response, but still not sleepy enough to not feel a little disappointed that he doesn’t stay.


End file.
